


The Magic Within

by atamascolily



Category: The Adventures of Sinbad (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Lots of personal headcanons in one place, Self Confidence Issues, post-season one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-16 22:19:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13063308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atamascolily/pseuds/atamascolily
Summary: Three weeks after the epic battle in "The Vengeance of Rumina," Maeve reflects on her failings and the nature of magic.





	The Magic Within

Magic, Maeve had discovered, was an elusive thing. Subtle and swirling, it was never the same from moment to moment, never solid, stable, firm. Every triumph was only temporary, every victory spanning only a heartbeat before collapsing into dust. Had she not had such a compelling reason to drive her, she thought wryly, she would have given up long ago. 

Still, she persisted. Every inch forward she moved, every scrap of progress she clawed from the shifting vortex of power that pulsed through her was hard-won and fiercely defended. She was not naturally gifted, but she was determined, and while she never dared aspire to perfection, she ached for mastery - or even basic competence. Brute force and sheer strength of will could take her where talent alone could not, but it was not particularly restful. 

Fire was easy, especially when she was angry. _Everything_ was easier when she was angry. Simpler, too, instead of a tangled, complicated thicket of emotions and choices. (Especially with Sinbad. Honestly, _why_ did the man have to be so difficult?) Wind and water were more challenging - and she'd never really gotten the hang of earth. Maybe because that required _grounding_ \- something she'd never been good at, even in the best of times. 

She stood on the foredeck of the _Nomad_ , leaning against the side of the ship, watching the water, lost in thought. She didn't have to look up to know that Dermott was soaring above her, free on the wind. Her hair hung loose and rippled back away from her face in the wind; she absent-mindedly reached out a hand to smooth it back. Another losing battle, but she tried. 

Unlike her struggles with magic, her appearance never bothered her as much, especially after that episode with Vincenzo. Too much beauty was just as troublesome as too little, and it was better to avoid attracting unwanted attention if she could. She got enough crap from men as it was. Nothing - except for the Vincenzo thing, blast it - that she hadn't been able to handle, but why borrow trouble? 

If she was honest with herself, though, the Vincenzo thing hadn't _solely_ been a matter of personal vanity. She'd just been - seeing how far she could go to make Sinbad jealous.And it had worked beautifully - right up until the moment she'd gotten snared like a three-day-old chick without the slightest hint of self-preservation. The memory still stung when she thought about it. 

But that had been early on, only a month or so after she met Sinbad. Now it was three weeks after the battle on Skull Island, on the anniversary of Turok's death, and they were sailing across the Mediterranean, while Sinbad pondered their next move. 

That date was significant for other reasons, too. It also marked a year since she'd joined the crew of the _Nomad_. A year since her teacher, Master Dim-Dim, had been transported to some other dimension by the demon Eblus. An entire year had come and gone, and despite several opportunities, she was no closer to achieving her goals that before. 

_Fat lot of good Dim-Dim was at magic, getting blown away to another dimension so easily_ , Maeve thought uncharitably. He hadn't even tried to fight Eblus - or if he had, it certainly hadn't worked out very well, had it? When Sinbad had just been able to waltz up and kill the demon by jamming a spear into its throat? What made her think she could learn magic from a man who hadn't been able to defeat something that could be so easily vanquished by other means? 

... But he had been kind to her. He had been good, and noble, and true, and she'd never yet caught him in a lie. He'd made her laugh when she thought she would never be capable of feeling joy again. That had to count for something, didn't it? 

And yet- he was gone, and without his guidance, she didn't know how to rescue him. She'd been able to reach him once, wherever he was, but he'd slipped away again before she'd had a chance to resolve the paradox. And so had his friend, Dinar, who died in her arms before revealing the secret, his last words some mad raving about bees and daffodils. 

_No more death and loss, please._ She was so tired of death and loss. She didn't think she could bear the pain of it anymore. 

Why hadn't she stayed with Caipra in Basra? She'd certainly thought about it. Caipra had discerned Maeve's goal from the beginning - to destroy Turok's daughter Rumina - something Maeve had never told another living soul, not even Dim-Dim. At first, she wasn't sure she could trust him with her secrets - later she was afraid that he would refuse her desperate entreaties if she told him the full truth. If she were honest with herself, it was also because she had been afraid he would laugh at her. She couldn't bear for him not to take her seriously. Not on this, the most important thing of all. 

Maybe she hadn't done as good a job of fooling Dim-Dim as she thought. For all that he played a senile old fool, he could be pretty sharp at times. Maybe he'd figured it out and told Caipra about Maeve's quest. _I was not very subtle,_ she thought with a pang, recollecting those early weeks under Dim-Dim's tutelage on the Isle of Dawn. 

Or maybe Caipra was just naturally more perceptive. She was indeed "a woman who far exceeds the boundaries of womanhood and reaches into the spheres of the masterful knowledge of the ways of magic," just as Dim-Dim had written. He'd neglected to mention she was also his _wife_. Typical of a man. Why hadn't Dim-Dim told Maeve about Caipra while he was still in this world? Why had he left it in his diary for her to find? 

She flushed. Well, there were a lot of secrets she'd hidden from Dim-Dim. Why should she be surprised that he had done the same? And he had intended for her to read his books - he'd even written her name on the cover of his diary. 

_Perhaps I should have trusted him after all. Perhaps..._

She sighed. It was too late for those regrets now. Surely, if Dim-Dim knew the truth, he would understand why Maeve had acted as she had. When she finally defeated Rumina and Dermott was restored to his true self, there would be no need for secrets. No more holding back. 

She was so tired of holding back, but there was nothing to be done until her task was complete and the dark sorceress was dead. 

_Rumina_. White-hot rage filled her, igniting the fires within. She could feel tiny spurts of flame forming on her fingertips, and the wooden beam underneath her hand began to smoke. She cut off her train of thought abruptly, clamping down hard on her emotions as she did so, and let out a long, slow breath. She filled her mind instead with images of water: waves flowing over the beach, the choppy white foam of the sea in front of her. _Breathe. Breathe._

The last time she'd let her anger at Rumina spiral too far out of control, she'd set the mast of the _Nomad_ on fire. Twice. Doubar had been livid. 

Sinbad had acted calm enough - as if she were a dangerous animal who would startle at the slightest provacation, which was probably true. But she sensed under the gentle facade that she was trying his patience and not in a good way. 

She'd made an special effort to curb her more violent feelings after that lest she destroy the whole ship by accident. It worked, but it left her feeling drained and tired, burying those negative emotions underneath the surface. 

_If only I could do things like that when I was actually *trying* to do them...._

In her mind, she felt Dermott stir, sensing her agitation, ready to stoop to her side if she needed him. He settled back into the rhythmns of flight when he felt her focus on the calm sea again. She could feel his palpable sense of relief, followed closely by his joy in flight. He was more hawk now than human, and perhaps even happier because of it. 

He hid those thoughts because he feared her reaction. She pretended not to notice when he did so, but his attempts never worked. Not with her, anyway. 

Sometimes, she couldn't even blame him for accepting the situation as it was.Things were certainly simpler when you weren't human. When you didn't feel painful things like jealousy and pride, failure and guilt. And she could only imagine how it felt to fly. 

Maybe she could try it someday- when her magic was strong enough-

_You have to create the magic within you,_ Dim-Dim always said. At the moment, she wasn't feeling very magical. Sulky and petulant and frustrated, certainly, but not at all magical. Probably not the best mood to attempt a complicated transformation sequence she'd never done before - or even a complex form of a simple levitation spell. _Especially_ without backup in case something went horribly wrong. 

Backup she no longer had. 

Rumina could transform herself into a whirlwind or even Sinbad (a terrible thought) without Turok standing over her, coaxing her every move. Maeve was grateful that Turok was no longer in the picture - as far as she was concerned, Rumina didn't need any extra help. But even without Turok's support, Rumina was still a formidable opponent. Thus far, she'd escaped Maeve's best efforts to kill her - and the one time Maeve _could_ have killed her, she'd hesitated and Rumina had gotten away again. 

Maeve noticed she was hyperventilating and the smell of woodsmoke had returned. She quickly returned to imagining water until her breathing calmed again. 

The irony was that Dermott was the one who had been born with a gift for magic, not Maeve. He'd been able to do small tricks from a young age, until he went to the priesthood at the monastery up on the hills above their seaside village. Their parents - and later, the priests - said his gifts were from God, and therefore blessed, but those same abilities were what wizards like Dim-Dim called magic. Dim-Dim said the magic existed inside everyone, but some, like Dermott, could draw on it more easily than others. 

As twins, Maeve and Dermott always knew what the other was thinking and feeling without words, often when they were far away. They were equally startled to learn other people couldn't do this. But even then, Maeve had been the solid, practical one, doing chores and learning swordplay on the sly while Dermott illuminated manuscripts in the monastic library, humming quietly to himself and shyly showing her his work when she slipped in to check on him. 

Maeve had never felt any need for magic beyond the link she shared with her brother, not until the day that sorceress had shown up and taken everything from her. 

Dermott's powers had been no match for Rumina's and she quickly overwhelmed him. She would have killed him outright with a bolt of power if Maeve hadn't charged in with a sword at the pivotal moment, and provided a distraction. It hadn't given Dermott much time - she only had a few precious seconds before Rumina disarmed her - but it was long enough for Dermott to destroy the priceless relics the monastery had held for centuries. Long enough so that Rumina could no longer steal them. 

Suffice to say that Rumina was not used to defiance, and both Maeve and Dermott had suffered as a result. 

_Peasant_. Her cheekens reddened. So she wasn't of noble birth. Why did Rumina aways know how to get under her skin so well? And Rumina herself, far from being a princess, was a parvenue with a rich daddy, who'd lied and cheated and murderered for his money. Rumina was the one who tried to marry a prince of Baghdad so she could have legitimate claim to the throne (and had completely failed, she thought, with a grim sense of satisfaction).

So she practiced. She read Dim-Dim's books, she lit candles and chanted spells in esoteric tongues, she meditated every evening on the cramped bunk in her private quarters - a luxury on such a small boat. She pulled fireballs out of the air the way Firouz's clever little cisterns caught rainwater. She'd summoned wind to save them from a firestorm, she'd frozen the Colossus with a wave of her hand, and she'd tricked a warlord who had never lost a battle. She'd even restored a shrunken Sinbad to his full size - something that she'd never even thought was possible. By all measures, she was improving in leaps and bounds. 

Yet it still wasn't _enough_. Rumina was still alive. Dermott was still a hawk. Despite all her efforts over the years since she'd stormed into the library to save Dermott from Rumina, she felt no closer to achieving her goals than before. 

_What if I’m never good enough to defeat her? What if my heart just isn’t that strong?_

_What if I'm a failure - forever?_

"Remember, Maeve", Caipra had said at their parting. "Read, practice, meditate. But the most important thing you need to remember is that the magic comes from you. Believe in yourself."

_And this is why I fail. This is why I will always fail. Because on some fundamental level, I don't believe I can do this. It's impossible, and always has been. And yet - I can't give up, either._

She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly, staring out at the water. She didn't believe in herself, and that was why the magic didn't work right for her, that was why it fought her tooth and nail. How could she fight Rumina and win when she was fighting herself at the same time? It was impossible. Truly impossible. 

But Sinbad believed in her. She didn't know why, but he truly did, and she could feel the force of it whenever they were together. 

That's why - in that moment in the battle against Rumina's forces three weeks ago - she'd found the strength she hadn't known she possessed. That's how she created such a massive fireball, one that had destroyed not only two rock giants, but an entire army of living skeletons. Because she couldn't imagine a world without Sinbad in it. 

Because she couldn't live with another person in her life suffering and dying as a result of her weakness. 

Because without his faith in her, she would fail. 

She would tear out her hair, strand by strand, before she would ever admit any of this to him, though. She couldn't bear the thought of any hint of smugness or swagger from him - not about something like this. If he teased her - if he didn't take her seriously - she would fall apart. And if she fell apart as a result of a few careless words from him, then she really _was_ done for. 

Sinbad was rarely cruel (and when he was it was generally on purpose, with someone who deserved it). He'd toned down a _lot_ from the arrogent jerk she'd remembered on the beach of the Isle of Dawn - sometimes impressively so. But she refused to open up to him, lest he take her vulnerability as weakness. As surrender. 

_What does he see in me that I don't see in myself? I mean, besides a warm, breathing female human body?_

Well, for most men, that was enough. That was _all_ they saw when they looked at a woman - a landscape for their own desires. But Sinbad could be more than that. He could be quiet, subtle. He could be calm. He could even be sensitive sometimes, and that was practically a miracle. 

He was most definitely crazy. For him it was an asset as much as anything else. It definitely caught a lot of his opponents off guard. 

Well, he was definitely crazy to believe in her. But it was somewhere to start. 

She'd never seen Sinbad fail. Not yet. Not where it truly counted, anyway. He'd never let her down. He might exasperate her beyond all reason, but she trusted him.

_Maybe I don't have to face Rumina alone._

_Maybe we could do this - together._

She inhaled sharply. He'd offered as much in the aftermath of the battle three weeks, hadn't he? And she hadn't known what to say, so instead she'd said nothing, assuming he was trying to make her feel better, that those kind words were empty words that people used when they were trying to be comforting. 

But maybe he had been serious. Maybe she could trust him. 

_Could_ she trust him? 

Above her, Dermott cried out, wheeling and diving, a wordless affirmation of trust and love for her, so strong she felt her heart would stop for the joy of it. 

_I thought you hated him!_ she called back, stunned by her brother's response. 

_He has a way of growing on you,_ was the verbal equivalent to the emotion Dermott projected back, in a tangled series of images and feelings that was so much deeper and richer than any spoken language could be. 

One image, of Sinbad tentatively reaching out to stroke the soft feathers on Dermott's breast, predominated. As did the concerned expression on Sinbad's face when he thought Maeve was in danger. 

There were _many_ such occasions, apparently. She hadn't realized quite how many until just now. 

She chuckled, amused in spite of herself. _Aye, that he does,_ she agreed, surprised at her own feelings. 

_Well, perhaps we'll see. Perhaps. Perhaps._

She'd wait for the right moment. It certainly wouldn't do to blurt it all out. Especially in front of the crew. 

But perhaps one evening as they stood together and watched the sunset, when all was calm... the time would be right to tell him the truth about her. About Dermott. About their past. 

Maybe she could ask him what he saw, when he looked at her, that allowed him to believe in her.

Maybe - if he could see magic within her - it was actually true.

It was certainly something to think about.


End file.
